*CHAPTER XV*
*A Tragedy of the Telegraph*
As the keel of the dinghy grated on the sand, and I scrambled ashore,
Mr. Fisher, the acting political agent, came down the path to meet me,
looking so thin and haggard I scarcely recognized him.
In answer to my eager questions he told me that he feared Borsen had
been killed, but was not yet certain.
"Five days ago the poor chap went down the coast on his usual monthly
duty of paying the local people at the different relay stations along
the telegraph-line. He took with him a Goanese telegraphist and half a
dozen native employees. The party rode away on their camels, and the
next I heard of them--two days later--was a telephone message that they
had seen some wandering parties of Baluchis or Afghans and had been
warned, by a friendly village where they had halted, that they might be
attacked and robbed. He intended to send the pay-chest, that night,
secretly, to the next village and to push on after it next morning.
"A message came from him to his sister, next morning, saying that he was
thoroughly enjoying himself and wished she was with him--that was to
allay her anxiety. Within an hour the Goanese telephoned in that he had
been killed, but the message was then interrupted, the wire was cut, and
we have heard nothing since. Quite probably this man was killed as
well.
"All we know is that the wire was broken somewhere about twenty-eight
miles away, and that when I took a large party out to try to reach the
spot, we found the coast swarming with brigands and were glad enough to
get back safely. We only returned a few hours ago, and now I want you
to take us down there as quickly as you can. It is our only chance of
finding any of the party alive--and a very poor chance, I'm afraid."
Of course I was ready to go anywhere or do anything. He and his party
were "standing by" to embark, and some ten or twelve natives were
already coming down from the telegraph-station with folding-ladders, a
portable telephone apparatus, coils of telegraph-wire, and repairing
tools. They also brought with them a roughly-made coffin, and, as fast
as they arrived, I sent them aboard the _Bunder Abbas_. Whilst Griffiths
was pulling the dinghy backwards and forwards I asked Mr. Fisher how his
wife and Miss Borsen were bearing up.
"Wonderfully well," he said, his face twitching. "Women sometimes make
us men almost ashamed of ourselves--they are so patient and brave."
The dinghy had returned for us, and just as we were stepping in we heard
a girl's voice calling, and saw poor little Miss Borsen standing behind
us, looking the picture of misery and distress, so sad and so pale under
her big, white topee that I felt horribly sorry for her. I saluted and
tried to show my sympathy. As I did so she flushed scarlet, and as
quickly every trace of colour left her face; she seemed to freeze, and
only bowed in the most distant manner. I knew that she meant this as a
direct "cut", to remind me that she had not yet forgiven me for carrying
her over the swamp that night.
Speaking to Mr. Fisher, and ignoring me, she implored him to take her.
He tried his best to dissuade her, but she insisted on coming.
"Do you mind if she comes?" he asked, turning to me.
"Not at all," I answered coldly, as if she were a complete stranger.
"Anybody you care to bring may come."
I looked to see if that hurt her, but she gave no sign whatever that she
had heard. I felt angry to be so snubbed, and a brute to feel so
enraged with her just when she was so miserable; but I could not help
it.
So they both came aboard with me, and an extremely uncomfortable trip it
was--squeezed up together in the little dinghy as we were, with Miss
Borsen ignoring me completely.
However, I was sitting where I could see her profile, and she looked so
utterly woebegone and lonely that my anger died away, until we got
alongside, when she smiled so sweetly on Mr. Scarlett, as he helped her
out of the boat, that I was furious again. I beat the feeling down,
and, as she evidently loathed the sight of me, kept away, giving her and
Mr. Fisher the use of the cabin and the little deck aft of it, and
rigging up a screen for'ard of it, so that she need not see me whilst I
took the "_B.A._" out of harbour. Percy fetched my pipe and tobacco, and
I smoked furiously and fumed inwardly all the way down the coast, unable
to avoid hearing Mr. Scarlett, on the other side of the screen, spinning
one of his most exciting yarns and trying to take her thoughts away.
However, he soon found that was no use, and came for'ard to me shaking
his head. "Poor little lady! Poor little soul!"
Percy was a fickle youth. Whilst Popple Opstein had been aboard, on
that amusing "Prodigal Son" adventure, he had transferred his worship
from Mr. Scarlett to him. Now he transferred it again to Miss Borsen,
and waited on her hand and foot, standing by with his big eyes fixed on
her as if she was some beautiful angel come straight down from heaven
into this little world of his. He was such a nuisance that Mr. Scarlett
had to drag him out and drop him down the ladder on to the fo'c'sle.
Mr. Fisher joined us presently, and we three, through our glasses,
examined the shore and desert plains running inland behind the line of
telegraph-posts. Before we had steamed ten miles we saw numerous bands
of mounted men moving about the dreary wastes, and Mr. Fisher was on
thorns to get back as quickly as possible to the telegraph-station
(which was now without a white man), and kept on saying: "I must send my
wife and Miss Borsen away by the very next steamer. I don't like the
look of things at all." He also told me that he had tried to make them
go by yesterday's mail-steamer--the one we had "spoken"--but that Miss
Borsen would not go until she had definite news of her brother's fate,
and his wife would not leave her at Jask alone. "They'll have to stay
there for another fortnight now," he said, shrugging his shoulders.
"She doesn't seem very pleased to see me," I said bitterly.
"I'm afraid you rather annoyed her the last time you were here."
"How? Carrying her over that swampy place?"
"Yes," he nodded; "she thought it an insult."
"If she never gets a bigger insult than that she won't do badly," I
answered angrily. "However, I'm sorry; but she won't let me tell her
so."
At last, about half-past four, Mr. Fisher thought we were abreast the
place where the last telephone message had come from--the five hundred
and twentieth telegraph-post I think he said it was--so I turned the
"_B.A._"'s bows inshore, with Ellis heaving the lead every few seconds,
to warn us of shoaling water.
It was a shallow, sandy bay with nothing to be seen on the desolate
shore except the endless line of telegraph-posts. I anchored three
hundred yards off and took ashore Mr. Fisher, a native telegraphist, and
the portable telephone apparatus.
They connected this to the telegraph-wire and tried to call up Jask. If
Jask answered, we were on the near side of the cut wire; and, as Jask
did answer, it showed that the spot where the tragedy had taken place
must be still farther away.
So back to the "_B.A._" we went, and I heard Miss Borsen asking Mr.
Fisher, with a half-sob, whether he had found anything.
We weighed anchor and felt our way, carefully, still farther along to
the east'ard.
Presently the signal-man shouted to me that he saw someone on the beach,
and, looking through my telescope, I made out a man hopping down towards
the water's edge on one leg and waving his arms to attract attention.
I called out to Mr. Fisher that we had found the place, pushed the
"_B.A._" in as far as I dared, anchored, and he and the man with the
telephone-box came ashore with me.
"The wire's cut about two hundred yards on the left," Mr. Scarlett
shouted after us. "I can see it trailing on the ground."
Griffiths pulled us in to the spot where the man--a Goanese he was--was
waiting for us, squatting down close to the sea. As I jumped ashore I
realized why he had been hopping--his left foot had been roughly hacked
off above the ankle. He was gesticulating and sobbing, jerking his head
backwards and forwards. Raving mad I thought him; certainly he was
half-delirious, and as he held out both his arms towards us I shuddered,
for he had no right hand, only a stump of a forearm.
"Right hand, left foot--a common custom," Mr. Fisher said, quite calmly,
as he let him sip from his water-bottle and tried to calm him.
Presently he was helped upright, and went hopping through the sand to
the top of the beach, where he clung to a telegraph-pole, close to the
foot of which were the remains of a wood fire and what I took to be
charred sticks.
He began speaking very rapidly.
He stopped, and Mr. Fisher led me away just as the repair party landed
about two hundred yards farther along the beach.
"Would you mind going and giving them a hand? They will work better if
you do. I must stay here."
I thought his request strange. His manner was very strange: his eyes
were burning with fear and disgust.
I did as he asked me and walked along to where the telegraph-wire lay on
the sand, coiled in spirals like a snake. The repairing people were
very smart at their job, fixed a rope and tackle from one cut end to the
other, and then hauled taut the great length of wire between the two
nearest telegraph-posts, mounting their portable ladders and fixing
things in a most seamanlike way, until they had the wire as taut as they
could haul it, with six or seven feet of rope tackle bridging the gap
and the two cut ends of the wire hanging down. Then they commenced to
put in a splice, and worked so cleverly and systematically that I was
quite interested.
The sun was getting close to the horizon by the time the wire was
properly joined together and their work finished. Mr. Fisher came to
see the job, and the telephone-box was brought along and messages sent
into Jask and to the nearest relay station on the other side.
"Well, that is done," he said, with a sigh of relief, "until they cut it
again."
The repairing people took their gear back to the "_B.A._" and we were
left alone. He took me to where we had landed, and I saw the mutilated
Goanese sitting close to the coffin, which I had not noticed being
brought ashore.
"Did you find Borsen's body?" I asked.
He nodded very sadly. "Yes; all that was left of it--a few charred
bones. They had cut him in pieces and burnt them."
I shuddered, and knew that what I had mistaken for charred sticks had
been bones. That was why he had sent me away.
There was nothing more to say, and we stood looking out over the sea,
with rage burning within us, at the thought of the hideous, useless
tragedy which had taken place at this spot only two days ago.
The glorious sunset was bathing everything--the sea, my little launch,
the shore--in a flood of molten gold, shading to the tenderest pinks as
it reached the barren mountains standing up so clear and sharp against
the silvery, green sky behind them. The radiant glow threw our shadows
and the shadows of those gaunt telegraph-poles slanting across the
sands, far across the trackless desert towards the feet of the
mountains. If we moved our bodies, our shadows swept in huge arcs
across the infinite silence, and, as we moved our arms, shot out huge,
ghastly tentacles horrid to see. The setting sun seemed to mock us in
its beauty, to laugh and say: "See, I rejoice in the wild wastes of
eternal sands. I wash their edges with my golden sea. I paint them
with my wondrous tints, and your ghostly shadows, and the shadows of the
telegraph-posts you have dared to place there, are the only blots on my
fair handiwork."
A beautiful sunset generally gives me a feeling of hope and of trust in
a glorious future. That evening I felt myself trembling with an
ill-defined fear of impending danger, and as though we and that lonely
telegraph-line had trespassed, had forced ourselves and our civilization
upon a land where nature, primitive and unchanged, held her sway, and
that we too should have to pay the penalty of our vandalism, even as
poor Borsen had already paid for his.
The dinghy was coming ashore, her sides glowing with light, the blades
of her oars dropping showers of golden spray as Griffiths lifted them
from the surface of the sea.
I stirred myself as the bows rasped on the beach, and helped to carry
the coffin into the boat, not daring to look behind me. It was very
heavy, and I looked enquiringly at Mr. Fisher.
"Sand," he said, and I understood.
The poor Goanese had crawled a little distance away, and was digging at
the sand with one hand. We found that he had buried his
telephone-box--the one by which he had sent that interrupted message
into Jask, and we quickly brought it to light. I knew what the look of
satisfaction in his eyes meant--he had saved it from falling into the
hands of the brigands, and had been faithful to his trust. The fellow
deserved a V.C., but seemed perfectly contented when Mr. Fisher spoke a
few words of praise to him.
We pulled away from the appalling loneliness of the telegraph-wire and
gaunt poles, and as we came alongside, the sun slid down below the
horizon, and Hartley, the signal-man, struck our little ensign.
What Mr. Fisher told Miss Borsen I do not know. I heard him take her
into the little cabin, slide the door across, and leave her there. The
port-holes were close to me as I stood by the compass giving orders to
the helmsman, and her broken-hearted sobs seemed to tear their way right
through me. Poor little fragile, lonely thing, and I had been so
fiercely angry at her scorn of me! I would have given the whole world
for her to forgive me and to be able to comfort her.
Presently her sobs ceased; possibly she slept. I dared not look through
the port-holes to see, and gave my orders in a whisper lest they should
disturb her. You could not hear a sound aboard the _Bunder Abbas_ except
the noise of the engines and the occasional tinkle of cooking-pots as
the dismal cook went on with his everlasting washing of them.
On the way back to Jask Mr. Fisher told me all that he had been able to
learn from the Goanese. The morning after Borsen had sent off the
pay-chest all his native employees deserted, so he and the Goanese had
to continue their inspection alone. They thought that the brigands would
not molest them; but when these cruel brutes galloped up and found the
money-chest gone, they were so enraged that they had killed Borsen,
mutilated the Goanese (as you know), and galloped away again. They
probably thought that the wretched telegraphist would die of sun and
thirst, and so he would had he not bravely crawled to the wire, dragging
the telephone-box after him, and with consummate pluck, considering the
horrible agony he must have been in, had thrown up the connecting wire
till its hook caught the telegraph-wire overhead, and enabled him to
send the message into Jask. This was the message which had been
telegraphed to Jask, from there to Muscat, and had brought us a hundred
and twenty miles across the sea to save his life. He had not been able
to complete it, because the Baluchis--some of them--had ridden back and
cut the wire between him and the telegraph-station. There he had been
for more than forty-eight hours without one drop of water. It was
indeed marvellous how he had survived.
On the way back, Percy and the dismal cook prepared as lavish a meal as
our little meat-safe and a small store of tinned food (kept for special
occasions) could provide, but I was in no fit mood to eat, and stayed
alone at the wheel. I steered to the south'ard, to get well away from
the land before laying off my course to Jask, picked up the light shown
from the telegraph-station some time before midnight, and anchored close
in under the rocks.
I believe that Miss Borsen slept all the way back. Poor little lady, the
strain of the last two days must have been awful, and she must have been
dead tired. I thought that the sight of me would increase her misery, so
I did not go down on deck when Mr. Fisher took her ashore.
Leaving Mr. Scarlett to see that everything was fixed up for the night,
I turned in, weary in mind and body, and dreamt once more that I was
carrying Miss Borsen down the path from the telegraph-station, pursued
by a score of mounted Baluchis, and that Griffiths was trying to bring
the dinghy ashore, but had lost one oar and was turning circles. I was
yelling for him to come my way, when Jassim suddenly appeared between me
and the sea.